


Redemption

by kingpeacock



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, WHY MUST THEY SUFFER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 23:09:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20629073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingpeacock/pseuds/kingpeacock
Summary: God bless Eiji Okumura. Without him, Ash would’ve given up by now. But, also, god damn Eiji Okumura, because without him, Ash would’ve definitely given up.





	Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song, Redemption by Besomorph and Coopex. I’d recommend it while you read!

You say I make you nervous, a tragedy; I’m a beautiful disaster, a reckoning

You wonder how I got this way

You think I’m someone to be saved, someone to clean up and tame

Oh some things never change, never change, oh

You think I would look pretty on your arm once you cover up my bruises and battle scars

But it always ends the same

Can’t bear the things I’ve had to face. Got you crying on your knees in pain

Oh somethings never change, never change 

You’ll break your back to make me feel again

Suffocate to make me breathe again

Lose your mind from endless praying

Somethings never change, never change

Redemption never came

I stopped asking for forgiveness cause you should know only fools tread where the angels fear to go

But you keep trying to get too close 

Saved myself by turning into stone, so save your judgment cause you just don’t know

But somethings never change, never change

They say I should feel guilty and change my ways. Leaving crumpled bodies in my wake

Swear I didn’t mean to make them break

But they’re so delicate and so mundane, and they keep coming like a moth to a flame

Oh somethings never change, never change 

_Filthy_.

As Ash stood in the shower, hot water running down his skin, he felt dirty. Filthy. Disgusting. No water would ever be hot enough to cleanse him of the debauchery, no soap strong enough. He could scrub until his skin bled and it wouldn’t be enough.

Never enough.

When you’re owned, they own all of you. Your body, your spirit, your future, but never your soul, Ash sought to remember that, but nights like this, it was a struggle.

Papa Dino, Golzine, whatever name you wanted to attribute to him, was little more than scum. An amoeba that grew on the bottom of a forgotten pond, and yet Ash’s mere existence was only because Golzine kept him alive.

His hands, rolling through his hair, caught against the huge, green emerald set into his ear. It made a shudder of disgust rock through his body, his stomach lurching.

_Disgusting_.

He wanted to rip the thing out. Rip it out, fall to the floor, scream, cry until his stomach emptied all over the bathroom, then lay in the blood and the water and the soap and drown. Just give up. Let go. Stop fighting. I’m done, I’m tired, please stop.

Death didn’t scare Ash, not really. Death came to everyone eventually, king or pauper, and it was your attitude to it that would mark your days, not your actual, inevitable death. The effects you had on other peoples lives was far more important than your death. No one remembers the heart attack, they remember the dearest family member and that thing they did that was just so kind.

Ash feared stagnation. An injustice never righted, a pain never soothed, an itch never scratched, for everything to stay dully the same, permanent, unchanging. It terrified him. To know you were treading water without making an inch of progress. The thought sickened him.

So, it was progress, then. A step forward, even if it broke his leg, even if it cost him everything. Progress was progress. Moving his story along, and hopefully touching other people’s in a positive way.

He’d used his time locked up - oh, sorry, as a guest of Papa Dino and his cronies - to study. Ash had applied that brain of his, eidetic memory and all, to investigating Banana Fish and how far into government this rot went, to trying to move the whole deal forward.

He hadn’t learned much. Dino had all of the useful information reasonably well protected, but Ash had gleaned everything he could. Banana Fish was designed to, essentially, remove free will from someone, anyone. It made them programmable like a machine, as proven by what had happened to Shorter, and it was almost foolproof - if the person was able to mentally fight it off, they could stave the effects off, but only temporarily. It told Ash a lot but also very little - drugs of that type had been trialed before, after all - but while his understanding of whyit worked had grown, his understanding of why it existed at allhadn’t.

When he’d stumbled on some files tucked away talking about ‘Subject 00873SW’, he’d vomited. Memories of Shorter’s laugh, his voice, his kindness, flashed back, in stark contrast to the information he was reading. So clinical and cold, so cruel a way of remembering such a bright, vibrant man who was so full of life and vitality until this vile world stole him away.

**Subject’s internal organs were deemed non-viable.**

**Subject’s blood samples showed lysis. Drug related? Illicit?**

**Subject’s resistance to the formula is admirable, but futile. ??? Use of AC as a catalyst?**

_Vile_.

Ash stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. He ached, his body, his heart, from the day he’d had. Apparently, Papa Dino had a new friend, some diplomat or another that had a fetish for rubber gloves and baby oil. It was why he needed such a hot shower, such a thick soaping up, because his skin was slick with it. He felt like he’d never be clean again.

Even in the fogged up mirror he could see the absolute state he was in. His muscular upper body looked thin, frail, his hair had lost its shine, his eyes were sunken in like a corpse, he was just an absolute shell of the kid he’d been a few weeks before.

“If Eiji could see you now, he’d be so mad,” Ash said softly to himself, the thought making him quietly laugh. The laugh stopped suddenly, replaced instead with a sob, broken, like glass against soft skin, cutting, drawing blood.

Eiji. 

God damn you, Eiji Okumura. 

God bless you, Eiji Okamura.

Ash stifled the crying before it started. It didn’t help, and it wouldn’t grant him any favours if he was caught crying himself stupid, so he swallowed it. He got dressed, brushed his hair, then went back to his prison cell of a bedroom, the bars on the window a constant, unneeded reminder of his current lack of freedom.

It wasn’t small - far from it, there were no small rooms in Papa Dino’s mansion after all - but it felt smaller than the cell he’d shared with Max, half a lifetime ago. He was like a caged butterfly, banging his wings bloody against the bars and wishing himself free.

Ash had, of course, put a lot of thought into escape. He’d pushed his boundaries as much as he could risk, trying to find weaknesses, but so far he’d found nothing. No chinks in the armour yet. He’d keep trying, because that’s who he was, but nothing so much as a sneeze escaped this place with its guards and CCTV and motion sensitive alarms.

Was Eiji out there somewhere? Was he thinking about Ash? Or had he done what he was told and left America for Japan, where he was safe?

Ash’s heart sank at the last possibility. He’d come for a Eiji. He’d kill for Eiji, he already had. He’d gone from a common thug to a murderer in the time Eiji had known him, and Ash felt it was worth it, because Eiji was safe. Eiji was there, and warm and so real, and he was safe. 

Ash wanted to believe that Eiji would come for him, somehow, but Ash was a realist. He couldn’t rely on outside help, no matter how much he hurt at the idea of Eiji just leaving him in hell, he knew he could only rely on himself, and trust that someone, somewhere, was going to be waiting for him to get free.

He lay on the bed, clutching a pillow close to his chest, burying his head in it and sighing. It was almost Eiji. It was comforting, warm, soft. It smelt nice, like expensive washing powder. His bed was changed every day, his room tidied like he was in a fancy five star hotel, and he had access to any book, movie, TV show he could ever want.

But it wasn’t Eiji. No comfort, no level of class could replace the closeness he and Eiji shared.

Eiji was soft, he had soft hair and soft skin and he felt soft to the touch. Ash was rough, prickly, but Eiji was soft enough for them both. Eiji would play with Ash’s hair, and Ash would pretend he hated it, and that it tickled, when in fact he loved it.

Ash liked tracing Eiji’s back. Pristine, of course, but for a few birthmarks and moles, which when you traced them just right, made a constellation. Eiji would wriggle and claim Ash was torturing him, making them both laugh, giving Ash the perfect excuse to pull Eiji on top of him, so Eiji would kiss him and they’d both just laugh until their sides hurt.

God, he really, really missed Eiji.

It’s no simple thing, missing someone. You spend days, weeks or months with them, falling in love, until your heartbeats match and your laughs form a chord instead of a dissonant smashing of notes, until you’re entwined with them, and then, you have to peel yourself free like a bandaid from a wound. 

That’s when the missing starts. They filled in the gaps that you had, and you theirs. Perhaps they can cook and you can’t, but you can drive and they can’t. Their hands are small and soft, yours are rough and large. Your hoodies are warm and their shirts with awful patterns aren’t.

You wear their shirts anyway. You like seeing that they don’t fit, but wearing them because they’re theirs. It makes them laugh.

Ash’s stomach twisted, and he fought the tears and the vomit back. He clutched the pillow tightly, his fingertips white with the pressure he was putting through them, holding the thing so tightly it felt like it might rip. 

Better the pillow than his skin.

He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling, pristine, white. There was little else in this carnal house that pure and white, he thought, the thought making him smile slightly. It was a dumb joke, but it was the first clever thought he’d had all day.

Ash thought, predictably, about Eiji. He wished he could speak to him. Just once. All of this, all this pain, would be worth it if Eiji was safe. If Shorter was still alive, Ash could relax, at least a little, because he knew Shorter would protect Eiji almost as well as Ash himself, could.

But you killed him.

There it was. That stark, cold thought that his brain would never let him silence. It burrowed into Ash’s chest like a knife to the heart, and made the nausea grow through him, his stomach roiling uncomfortably.

Ash would give anything to go back. Back to that house out by the bay, when Shorter, he and Eiji had sat out under the sunset, talking shit. With Shorter, everything is talking shit, but that’s why Ash loved him, and why Eiji was drawn to him, too. Cape Cod had shown Ash would could be, what could have been maybe, if only he wasn’t Ash Lynx.

Ash Lynx, Aslan Jade Callenreese, didn’t get happiness. Happy endings happen to other people, or in movies. There are no happy endings. Not really.

Except maybe... Maybe there could’ve been. 

Maybe, there could’ve been a world where he and Eiji shared a bed every night, a kiss every morning. Where Shorter could’ve been their best friend, practically living at Ash and Eiji’s, to the point that they’d consider charging him rent. They’d all have jobs, or be students. Ash... Ash would study Law, or history, something that needed memory. Shorter might finally start taking drawing seriously, be an art major, or maybe math (people underestimated just how smart that guy really was), and Eiji... Well, if he wanted uni he could do it, but Ash’s little daydream life had Eiji working at the library. Ash was projecting, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He just loved seeing Eiji’s childlike wonder at the books, the building and the decoration.

But, no. His story so far was continuing as expected. Even happy endings - where the guy and girl get married and live happily ever after - don’t last. One of them will eventually die, or leave, and where’s the happiness in that? There’s no happiness in pain.

Still. It was nice to think about. Maybe they’d have a cat, or Ash would get his dream and own a dog. A big Labrador maybe, that Ash could call Darwin and take out running. 

He’d never know now. Ash was stagnant water, barely moving more than an inch a day, nothing more than arm candy under Dino’s gaze. Dino would put makeup on the bruises on his face, dress him like a doll, make sure he was presentable before letting anyone see him, and Ash hated it. He wanted to scream out and ask for help, but for what purpose? If he didn’t get punished, that Lee bastard would make sure Eiji did.

For the first time in his life, Ash Lynx was stuck. Cornered. 

And so he did, as he had done for weeks, and cried himself to sleep, thinking of Eiji goddamn Okumura.


End file.
